Demonising women who abandon babies won’t solve the problem

Last Friday, media outlets reported a story about the body of a newborn baby that was found in a bathroom sanitary pad disposal bin in a corporate building in Parktown, Johannesburg.

According to the reports, the discovery was made by a cleaner who was clearing the bins in the late afternoon.

The matter was reported to law enforcement and the employees at the company were provided counselling services.

Across social media platforms and the comments sections of online news outlets, there has been collective condemnation of the baby’s unidentified mother.

Many people are arguing that she’s a cruel person for disposing of a newborn baby in such a callous manner.

They argue that abandoning a helpless and vulnerable child in a bin is the mark of evil.

While I certainly share the sentiment that abandoning a baby in a bin is devoid of compassion, I also think there’s something deeply problematic about a society that demonises a mother who does this without interrogating the prevailing structural and societal constructs that force women to commit such abominable acts.

I don’t believe that women who abandon newborns in trash cans are inherently evil people who have no regard for human life.

In most cases, certain conditions must exist for a woman to believe that the only option she has is to throw a child in a sanitary pad disposal bin.

Often, women who do this are in a desperate situation either having been unable to access termination services timeously, or lacking the necessary support to see a pregnancy through.

Termination services are available for free in public hospitals up to 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Even so, many women are often denied these services an issue that has been raised many times by the parliamentary portfolio committee on health.

In some cases, healthcare workers fail in their duty to provide this service due to their own moral or religious reasons, while in other cases, hospitals and clinics do not have the resources to provide even the most basic care.

Lack of support also plays a role in women’s decisions to abandon newborn babies.

Sometimes, these women are young still in university or having recently started a job.

Without support from family or the fathers of their children, they see no way out.

Given the fact that the baby in question was abandoned in the bin of a corporate office, it’s likely that the mother, though employed, might have not been financially secure enough to afford the baby.

She might have not been an executive, or might have not had adequate mental, emotional and physical resources to be a mother.

Some people argue that these women have the option to give birth and then get the children adopted or fostered.

This is easier said than done.

For one thing, the child protection system in SA is extremely complicated and chronically under-resourced.

Furthermore, some categories of women are excluded.

Undocumented immigrants are unable to legally place their children in the formal child protection system in SA, and face deportation should they try.

Additionally, relinquishing parental rights so that a child can be adopted can only be done with a legal guardian’s consent from the age of 18 years, making this option inaccessible to teenage mothers.

Under such conditions, women’s options are painfully limited.

My heart bleeds for the more than 3,500 babies who are abandoned annually in our country.

They deserve a better outcome.

It also bleeds for the mothers who are put in such a painful situation by problematic laws, a society that shames women who struggle with motherhood, and a world in which men are never asked to account for their absence and lack of support to the women they impregnate.

I don’t believe that women who abandon newborns in trash cans are inherently evil people’